REVELATION: Book One of THE RECARN CHRONICLES

by Gregory N. Taylor

  “Scenes like this are being repeated in cities across the globe, from London to Edinburgh. From New Orleans to New York to Chicago to Los Angeles. From Sydney to Perth, From Kolkata to Delhi. From Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia. No country is escaping the wrath of its people. It’s almost as if the recession has been globally orchestrated.

  “The crowd is being forced back – Peter, if we don’t move quick we’re going to be knocked over and trampled – move towards the corner over there. There’s a side street we can run down if necessary – but only if I say so! Keep filming!”

  The cameraman, Peter Kane, moved towards the relative safety of the corner of the Square. Aarika tapped the shoulder of the protester closest to her.

  "Sir? Sir? Aarika Bhandari, BTV News. Can you tell me why you’re here today?”

  A man, in his early to mid-twenties leaned in towards the camera.

  “Why am I here? Why am I here? ‘Cos this government has to go, that’s why! ‘Cos this government is fucking up everything!”

  “What’s the government doing wrong, in your opinion?”

  Aarika knew that this was a stupid question, but she was paid to ask stupid questions.

  “Everything. Sky high prices. Mass unemployment. Companies are dropping like flies. My parents can hardly afford to feed the family. My dad’s lost his job because of this recession. We’re living on my mum’s money now. I’m a student. I’m studying to be an accountant. If it keeps on like this nobody will have any money to be ‘accounted’.”

  “What’s your name, please?”

  “Maurice. Maurice Boone.”

  How do you think this recession can be stopped, Mr. Boone?”

  “I don’t know. Probably a mass injection of cash into the economy. But where’s that going to come from, eh? The people haven’t got it. We’re barely surviving as it is. If the government try to raise money through higher taxes, it won't work. Joe Public hasn't got the money.”

  “Are you married, Mr. Boone?”

  “Engaged. To Karen.”

  “And how do you see your future, Mr. Boone?”

  “Unless this shit gets sorted out, I don’t really see a future. It’ll need something really radical to sort this mess out.”

  “Thank you Mr. Boone.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Maurice turned back to the crowd and joined in their chants, his fist pumping the air. The strains of ‘Out! Out! Out! Out! Sort this bloody mess out!’ were so loud that even the starlings were giving Parliament Square a wide birth that afternoon. Aarika and her cameraman walked briskly back to their car. She chided Peter for his slowness, ignoring the fact that he was carrying all the heavy equipment and all she was carrying was the microphone.

  “Come on Peter, get a move on. I don’t want to get caught up in things if the protest turns ugly. Although I agree with the protesters, I do have a job and I mean to live to keep it.”

  Chapter 7

  6 a.m. Friday, 11th May, 2040

  The final count was over. The voting had closed seven hours earlier and, thanks to the new and streamlined internet voting system, the whole of the United Kingdom was waking up to a new government. The Order of New Perfectibilists had achieved a landslide victory. The Conservative, Labour, and Social Democratic parties had all failed to offer a meaningful solution to the recession and had allowed a young whippersnapper of a party – the ONP – to sweep past them and take control of the country. The voters had been swayed by the rapid influx of investment that had suddenly been created in the name of the ONP, not worrying about where the money had actually come from. All that the voters knew was that it wasn’t coming out of their pockets, that they were not expected to fund the investments. It certainly wasn’t coming from the previous government; the condition of the National Health Service was still worsening and public funding cuts were still prevalent.

  The majority of the British public thought that the official name of this new party, The Order of New Perfectibilists, was a pretty stupid name but if they could return some kind of decent living standards to Britain then who cares what they call themselves. Anyway, the name was always abbreviated to the ONP, which rolled off the tongue quite nicely.

  This scene was being repeated in most democratic countries around the world. The recession was causing elections to be held even before the incumbent government was due to go to the polls. Those governments thought that they were looking for a vote of confidence, an opportunity to extend their mandates by a number of years, allowing them to try to rectify their countries' problems. But, like a leopard stalking its prey, the ONP had sprung out of nowhere and seduced the electorates with remedial measures that not only would not take money from the voters’ pockets but also offer them a way to increase each voter’s income. The ONP, unbeknown to the majority of people, was funded by the obscenely wealthy Illuminati and had no need to demand funds from the general public in order to achieve its political ambitions; it had accumulated enormous wealth since the end of the eighteenth century.

  By 2050, the events of 2015, the Revelation, were becoming a distant memory but the consequences had been felt far and wide across the planet. Those that had once been the strongest and most steadfast of the world’s religions were suffering, with followers abandoning them in their millions to ally themselves to a something that wasn’t so much a religion as an ideology. With the existence of reincarnation scientifically proven, millions of people doubted their religious faith. If their scriptures, be they the Bible, the Quran, the Torah or any other could have misled them about reincarnation, then what else had they been told that was wrong? By 2025 large swathes of the world’s population had become disciples of a new movement, known simply as ‘The Truth’. The Truth didn’t have any of the trappings of conventional religions. It had no churches, it had no priests, and it had no ceremonies. It didn’t require worship and blind obedience to an invisible god. It didn’t overtly discriminate against minorities on the basis of colour, race, gender, sexual preference, disability, or age. It upheld some of the basic tenets of the old religions. It prohibited murder and theft. For the most part, what had previously been morally wrong was still morally wrong. But it certainly didn’t promise a celestial paradise in the form of Heaven or everlasting punishment in the fiery pits of Hell.

  The dark side of The Truth was that it was all part of the Illuminati strategy to create a New World Order. The ultimate aim of the Illuminati was to create a totalitarian world government, but the world’s religious and political systems had been too diverse and the way that the planet was politically divided into nation states had meant that the task was too great…until now. Of course, there were many conspiracy theories about how the Illuminati had already infiltrated governments around the world, of how they controlled certain elements of international governments, of how certain influential members of those governments – including some world leaders - were actually members of the Illuminati. Some of these theories were true, some weren’t, but a true global government would not be possible unless there were a global political party in power in each country creating and enforcing essentially identical political strategies in the various nation states. The Revelation of reincarnation and the emergence of The Truth enabled such global political reform.

  The Illuminati, also known as The Order, was coming out of the shadows but, of course, could not do so with complete transparency. Fear and distrust were still the prime sentiments felt whenever the name ‘Illuminati’ was mentioned. Hence the creation of the ONP, populated by Illuminati members and sympathizers, and after a slow start – via local and regional elections – the party had burrowed its way into the mindset of each country’s electorate by providing solutions to problems that The Order itself had created. By the mid-2040s the ONP was in power in a large number of first world countries. In some, such as the UK, the task had been made simpler by an electoral system that allowed any party an equal chance to grow and prosper. In the USA it was a much more difficult task, their two party
system not being conducive to newcomers, but – with the assistance of Illuminati members already ensconced in the American political system – these obstacles were finally overcome. The first world was the first to fall, Northern Europe and Oceana being less religious than many other countries. Russia tried to resist but eventually the will of the people won and demanded what they saw as a change for the better. The USA was a harder nut to crack, but cracked it had been although there was substantial resistance from the Bible belt states which required constant containment. Many moderately religious countries had also succumbed to ONP rule but there were significant areas of the world that still needed to be conquered, most notably the Middle East, and large parts of Africa and Asia. India was a strange case and the Illuminati would have to reconsider its strategy if it were to take power there; the Hindu majority had treated the proof of reincarnation as justification for saying ‘I told you so’. Buddhists felt partly vindicated, as they were correct about reincarnation existing but had been wrong about reincarnation being able to cross species. Ex-Buddhists were now able to dig the earth without the fear that the worm that they accidentally sliced in two could have been an ancestor of theirs.

  Aaron Hunt had died in his sleep in 2047, at the age of eighty-seven. His wife Susan had passed away four years earlier than Aaron, and he had never quite got over the loss. He had been forever thankful for her love and her patience with him; many wives would have thought their husbands crazy to spend their lives trying to prove such a concept as reincarnation. But Susan wasn’t ‘many wives’. She knew how dedicated Aaron was to his research and had supported him all the way. She may have had reservations herself as to whether it was worthwhile but it made him happy and this, in turn, made her happy. Some may have thought that Aaron was a bumbling lunatic looking for an imaginary pot of gold at the end of an invisible rainbow, but Susan knew that dreams were important. So what if he had never actually discovered by himself that there was life after death, that reincarnation was more than a fanciful wish. Aaron had been instrumental, a major player in The Revelation. Those who had scoffed at his research, at his conviction that he was right, had been forced to eat humble pie.

  Chapter 8

  7 p.m. Wednesday, 11th January, 2051

  The car door slid back silently along its tracks and Thomas McCann eased himself out of the vehicle. It was bitterly cold outside and there was a thin layer of snow on the ground. Fortunately the snow had stopped, but it still made walking treacherous, especially for Thomas. He was wrapped up warm in a thick grey overcoat, a crimson scarf coiled around his neck, with thermal gloves to keep his hands warm. Under his left arm he carried a brown briefcase, while his right hand gripped the top of the cane that he had been using ever since his legs had ceased to be able to support his weight unaided. The muscle wastage caused by the onset of Muscular Dystrophy wasn’t abating and Thomas didn’t know how much longer he would be able to walk with just the help of a stick. A parking valet took his car keys from him with a welcoming smile. The valet didn’t know who exactly Thomas McCall was, but he could tell that he was a very important man. He only had to take one look at his car; these new Audi Executive models didn’t come cheap.

  Thomas had done well within The Order, as the Illuminati was known to its members, rising rapidly to the rank of Prince-Prefect since he and his colleagues had brought about The Revelation. Of course, he had had to make his way through the ranks, as had the other members of Team Revelation, but his potential hadn’t gone unnoticed and his professional career had been fast-tracked. Promotions had been frequent. He owned a beautiful house in the country, a classic Aston Martin sports car for weekends and this high-end executive model for all other times. The car he was using to visit the Ruling Committee could self-park in any of the city’s multi-storey car parks but for off-the-grid car parking, such as at this erstwhile stately home in the Wiltshire countryside, human intervention was still necessary; hence the valet parking.

  Thomas (he no longer liked to be called Tom, as he thought that the full version of his first name had more gravitas) was now Head of Religious Affairs for the Illuminati.

  The principle goal of the Illuminati was to create a New World Order where they controlled the world’s finances, governments and religion. They had a good track record of manipulating global finances, and substantial success in exercising control over various governments, but religious power was far more difficult to achieve as it meant destroying current religious beliefs, beliefs that had existed for thousands of years. This is what had driven the current Pindar, the leader of The Order, Nathan Smith, to divulge a secret that The Order had known for generations – that reincarnation wasn’t simply a fanciful idea but a scientific fact.

  Nathan Smith, in one of his previous incarnations (that of Adam Wieshaupt, the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt) had created the Order of Perfectibilists, on May 1st, 1776 in Bavaria. Shortly after, he changed the name of his foundling organisation to the Illuminati as he felt The Order of Perfectibilists sounded a little too bizarre for the time.

  Controlling the world politically, although not an easy task, was with fewer complications than controlling it spiritually; religion isn’t restricted by geographical borders. Most religions can be found in almost any country in the world, even if not publically demonstrated. To damage the stronger religions required something so powerful, so faith-challenging, that it would rock the very foundations of that religious belief, creating a weakness which The Order could exploit. It was with this in mind that Nathan decided to include the world in the secret that only he and his organization had known for centuries. If he proved to the world that reincarnation was a reality, that the great mystery – what happens when we die – was no longer a mystery, then how could the major religions continue in their peddling of Heaven and Hell? It would obviously not be an overnight transformation, but with careful planning and execution it would be possible. Christianity, Islam, Judaism etc. could be critically compromised. The ultimate aim of the Illuminati, that the world should have one government and one religion, could eventually be achieved. That had been Nathan Smith’s dream and that is why he had created Team Revelation.

  Nathan Smith had taken a special interest in Thomas. Thomas had sensed this interest, having been fast-tracked through the system, but was at a loss as to why he was now at Nathan’s private residence and the headquarters of Illuminati. Had he done something wrong? Not that he knew of. It surely couldn’t be another promotion; he’d climbed almost all the rungs of the corporate ladder. He was 59 years old now and wasn’t really expecting any more career advancement. The next phase of life that he was openly anticipating was retirement, perhaps to his holiday home on Bernardo Island, his private island just off the coast of Rio de Janeiro or to his other island, Dhidhoo Island, in the Maldives. The only other possibility that he could imagine was that there was a new project that Nathan Smith wanted him to run.

  A security guard opened the large oak door to the house and Thomas entered, walking as best he could, considering the pain and discomfort that followed him wherever he went. He positioned himself in the centre of a 2 metre diameter white circle, spread his legs a little, taking the weight upon his cane, and allowed his left arm to loosely hang by his side. Once settled, he nodded to another security guard who pressed a button on his wristwatch. A blue light bathed Thomas, checking for weapons of any type and any communicable diseases. If any weapons or contagious or infectious illness had been found during this scan, the light would have transformed into a red force field, preventing Thomas or anything he was carrying from leaving the area. The light also performed a DNA security check, six miniscule samples being drawn painlessly from random parts of the subject’s body in order to avoid stolen body parts from a person being used to allow imposters access to secure locations. Once it was determined that Thomas wasn’t a security risk, the light housing returned to the ceiling, retracting into a small pod located directly above the centre of the cir
cle.

  The security guard knew who Thomas was and that he was a very high-ranking member of The Order, but everyone – even Nathan – had to undergo this procedure.

  “Thank you Mr. McCann sir. Mr. Smith is expecting you. You know where to go?”

  Thomas did indeed know the way to Nathan’s office, as he had probably visited it about a hundred times previously. The security officer’s enquiry was more of a ritual than an offer of assistance. As he approached Nathan’s office, another light – this time green – flashed six times in quick succession and the door opened.

  “Ah, Thomas. Come in. Come in. Take a seat, please.”

  Thomas did as he was bid, letting his cane rest on his lap. The seats were very luxurious, reflecting the opulence of the room in which he was now sitting.

  “Thank you Sir.”

  “I imagine you’re wondering why I asked you here today.”

  “Yes Sir.”

  “How old are you now Thomas?”

  Nathan knew the answer. The personal details of everyone in the country were on government databases, to which Nathan had complete freedom of access.

  “I’m fifty-nine, sir.”

  “Do you know how old I am, Thomas?”

  Thomas didn’t want to hazard a guess. He too had considerable access to a myriad of personal details databases, but even he wasn’t privy to Nathan Smith’s details. He decided to be conservative with his guess. He didn’t want to be too complimentary though; he didn’t want to look as if he was fawning over the Pindar.

  “Erm… Early seventies perhaps?”

  “I’m eighty-three, Thomas. I’m eighty-three.”